I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

My first birdhouse gourd! Wahooo! Now for the hard part… Letting the gourd dry out all winter in the garage so I can turn it into a birdhouse next summer. We ended up with only one bird house gourd this year, but after we relocate the shrubs along the front fence this fall and clean up the area a bit, I’m hoping to fill the entire front fence area with birdhouse gourds and mini pumpkin plants next summer. Making a garden your own takes time, but it’s also so much fun to watch things evolve, don’t you think?

The voles must be back because Lucy the Huntress has been on a major digging spree the last few days. She hasn’t brought us any presents yet but I fully expect a furry little gift on the back patio anyway now. 😉

Since Lucy was in the mood to dig, I had her dig up a small little patch in the sweet potato bed.

We only dug up one sweet potato, but I must admit I was totally disappointed when I saw that the sweet potato was only about the size of a finger. 🙁 Word on the street is sweet potatoes are supposed to be dug the night before the first frost…. We are in Zone 5 and our average first frost date is Oct 16-31. And that makes me a little nervous. I don’t know how this years sweet potato crop will do, but you can bet that next summer I will be covering the soil with black plastic to help them along.

Friday it’s supposed to get down to 43 degrees {at night} but other than that one night, the forecast is looking pretty good with evening temps in the mid to upper 50’s. I guess only time will tell if we’ll get a decent harvest or not.

The French Breakfast radishes though, they are looking {and tasting!} great.

And out peppers {both sweet and mild} are trucking along.

The carrots though, I don’t plan to harvest those until I have to.

Groupings of random holes in our yard…. The HH thinks it’s the squirrels hiding their nuts. What do YOU think?

The rocket lettuce and Swiss chard are going gangbusters lately, I can’t feed them to the chickens fast enough.

And take a look at those squash!!! These must be the ones One Hundred Dollars a Month reader Caroline sent me the seeds for {I can’t remember the name of the seed though}. We just harvested these squash last night so I don’t know what they taste like yet, but my guess is something along the lines of a butternut squash.

Fall, it’s my favorite season, and I’m so happy to be here!

What are YOU harvesting from YOUR garden these days? Did you grow sweet potatoes this year? How are your’e doing? Curious minds want to know.

~Mavis

The backyard vegetable garden tally of 2018:

Beets 23 pounds 2 ounces

Blueberries 32 pounds 2 ounces Done!

Corn 14 pounds 9 ounces Done!

Cucumbers 63 pounds 6 ounces Done!

Green Beans 1 pound 13 ounces

Green Onion/Scallions 13 ounces

Lettuce 15 ounces

Onions 8 pounds 14 ounces

Peppers 4 pound 0 ounces

Potatoes 9 pound 6 ounces

Radishes 3 ounces

Sugar Snap Peas 1 pound 2 ounces Done!

Swiss Chard 11 pounds 9 ounces

Tomatoes 181 pounds 15 ounces {AWESOME!} Done!

Turnips 9 pounds 3 ounces

Winter Squash/Pumpkins 68 pounds 13 ounces

Zucchini 7 pounds 11 ounces

Herbs

Basil 1 pound 13 ounces

Chives 1 ounces

Mint 4 ounce

Oregano 13 ounces

Total Food Harvested in 2018 439 Pounds 2 Ounces

Total Eggs Collected in 2018 33 eggs!!! {with 7 hens} 3 {the ladies are laying and they are just 21 weeks old}

Money Collected at the Vegetable Stand in 2018 $260.76

Total spent growing 439 pounds 2 ounces of food this year $811.00 {about $1.87 a pound so far!} My goal every year is to get this down to $1.00 a pound or less by the end of the season. This year though, because of the move and some higher than normal start up costs, it’s a bit higher. What did I spend my garden money on this year you ask? Well, $399 on Mannyand the rest on seeds, compost, grow light bulbsand small garden tools/supplies.

There are many different varieties of sweet potatoes, some do better than others depending on your soil. For me in Florida Georgia Jets do the best, maturing quickly with at least one large on per plant. The Diane variety has multiple medium sized ones per plant but the Nancy Hall and Yellow Jewel varieties look like yours. These were planted in June on the edge of a Irish potato field that was harvested in May so the soil was well tilled and fertile.

Fall is a wonderful time of year – isn’t it? Beautiful sunsets, the trees turning color and the cooler temps. I love it too. I know you will reach your goal. You are super close. It is great to have you over here on the east coast to enjoy our great seasons. I know you will LOVE the winters. They may be a bit brutal at times, but a few days stuck inside when there is snow on the ground is a good thing. That is the time to be creative and have winter projects. Love your blog and the daily pics of Lucy. She is a cutie. Keep up the good work. We cannot WAIT for the secret project reveal!!

The potato you’ve dug up looks like one that is from along the vines. Those will always be small and I use them as re seeding potatoes for the next year. Follow the vines back to the main root/plant and that’s where you’ll find the big ones. Keep in mind that sweet potatoes like loose soil, so if your soil was compacted, that will affect how big they get and how many you get. I had a boatload last year from about a dozen that I planted in a bed that was full of rotted wood and dirt. As an experiment, I planted in large containers this year. The vines are growing up a trellis instead of along the ground, so no little ones this year along the vines. I’m wondering if the combination of the potting soil (being nice and loose) and no energy going to tiny potatoes along the vine will produce more/larger potatoes in the pot.
Guess we’ll see soon..

I was curious about my sweet potatoes (western NY) so I pulled up a vine and got a potato out that looks very similar to yours. My vines are still pretty vibrant, so I’m going to let them keep trucking and see what we get. The last time I grew them I grew them in traditional soil (we have mostly a clay soil), so didn’t get good results. This time I grew them in my Back to Eden transition bed (mostly bedding from the goats which is mostly hay and goat droppings–I planted the slips in a little bit of garden soil that i put right on top of the loose hay)…so they have plenty of looseness to grow in!

I don’t know your soil up there, but when I was learning about planting sweet taties here in the mid west, they recommended that we make long hills abt 12″ high, and plant the slips on the top! and be sure to mulch!! The height of the soil mound, makes it easier for the sun to heat the soil earlier, which is what they love! 🙂 We’ve had SEVERAL wonderful sweet tatie harvests through the years! Hope your main plants have some big ones! 🙂

Here in South Carolina, we wait until a frost before we harvest our sweet potatoes. A frost will kill off the vines and they are easier to see and dig. We always have fingerling sweet potatoes along with big ones so don’t give up hope!

The little sweet potatoes are still delicious! I agree with the above comments that the size varies by location and plant, but the little ones are good for starting slips or roasting (chop them, toss with oil, and season with salt, dash of cayenne, brown sugar, cinnamon, etc. and bake, tossing once or twice).

We just pulled our tomato plants, and we have a few pepper plants still going, but I am mostly focused on fall veggies now. We have carrots, broccoli, sprouting broccoli, cabbage, beets, and peas, and I need to plant onions and garlic this week. I’m very excited about sprouting broccoli since I’ve never grown it–it’s supposed to overwinter and be picked in spring. And I’m about a month late on peas, but I have a greenhouse that fits that bed, so I’m experimenting to see if I can keep them going to harvest.

I’m in zone 5, too. In Troy (Albany), NY. The last thing I harvest in November are my sweet potatoes. I’ve been growing them here for five years and I let them go until the very last minute. You will get a bunch of tiny roots because they are an actual root, unlike potatoes. But you’re going to have a bunch of whoppers too. The key is to make their growing season as long as possible. At least 100 days. So hang tight for another month or as long as the weather holds off. I generally dig them right after the leaves die back.

And speaking of…I hope you ate some of the leaves. They’re delicious! And because sweet potatoes are only super distantly related to potatoes (sweets are related to morning glories), they’re great to eat.

I always have critters digging holes in my dirt the night after I clear it out. I try to plan for a day or two of critter time between when I clear out and plant an area. If I don’t they just un-plant half of what I’ve planted! But since your holes are in your yard, it might be squirrels hiding nuts. They are going crazy in my Michigan yard hiding walnuts right now!

Hi there, what a wonderful garden! I would agree with skunks eating grubs which is a good thing! In our neck of the woods, it is often the grubs that turn into the massive Japanese beetle that lays all the eggs….the big greenish brown one that flies close to the ground and very hard to get, so I love my skunks! It’s just a little hole, now a groundhog…that’s a hole! I hope you have a great weekend too. I’m hoping to go to an apple festival if it will only stop raining!